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obsequious - vocabulary

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  Ed Good  —  Grammar Tips
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adjective

Showing a servile or fawning readiness to fall in with the wishes or will of another; overly deferential.

What guest at Dives’s table can pass the familiar house without a sigh?—the familiar house of which the lights used to shine so cheerfully at seven o’clock, of which the hall-doors opened so readily, of which the obsequious servants, as you passed up the comfortable stair, sounded your name from landing to landing, until it reached the apartment where jolly old Dives welcomed his friends! What a number of them he had; and what a noble way of entertaining them. How witty people used to be here who were morose when they got out of the door; and how courteous and friendly men who slandered and hated each other everywhere else! He was pompous, but with such a cook what would one not swallow? He was rather dull, perhaps, but would not such wine make any conversation pleasant?

—William M. Thackeray Vanity Fair (1847–48)

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